President Donald Trump continued to point to Chicago as the city prepares for a possible federal intervention.
“We would love to go to Chicago and straighten him,” Trump said as he pronounced comments at the Bible Museum.
Earlier on Monday, Trump wrote on his social networks platform that the people of Illinois should “join and demand protection” of what he has said that it is a crime problem in Chicago, despite the fact that police data show murders and shootings this year compared to the last.
“I want to help the people of Chicago, not hurt them. Only the criminals will be injured! We can move quickly and stop this madness,” Trump wrote in the publication.
President Donald Trump speaks at a hearing of the Religious Freedom Commission at the Bible Museum, on Monday, September 8, 2025, in Washington.
Alex Brandon/AP
The comments occur after a war war during the weekend among the leaders of Trump and Illinois after a controversial position of the president who refers to the newly renamed war department.
“Chicago is about to discover why the war department is called,” Trump wrote in a publication on Saturday that included a manipulated image and a subtitles reading, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” a wink to the often quoted line “I love the smell of Napalma in the morning” of the war film “Apocalypse now.” “.” “
Later, Trump minimized the threat and told journalists on Sunday: “We are not going to war. We are going to clean our cities.”
Democratic leaders in Illinois criticized Trump’s rhetoric, and the protests developed throughout Chicago on Saturday against the president’s threat to increase the application of the Immigration Law and the Office of Troops of the National Guard.
“” I want to help people, not hurt them, “says the guy who only threatened an American city with the war department,” wrote Illinois JB Pritzker governor in X on Monday.
While Trump said Monday that he wanted to “fix” Chicago, he also pointed out that his administration could not send troops without a request from state and local officials, saying that his administration is “waiting for a call from Chicago.”
“I don’t know why Chicago does not call us, saying: Please, try us to help us when you have more than a short period of time, 50 murders and hundreds of people shot. And then you have a governor who stands up and says that the crime is fine. It is really crazy, but we are bringing the law and order to our country,” Trump said.
Pritzker has made it clear that he will not make such request, telling journalists last week: “When did we become a country where it is fine that the president of the United States insists on national television that a state should call it to beg for something, especially something we don’t want?”
Meanwhile, immigration and customs control (ICE) launched an expanded operation called “Midway Blitz” on Monday, which “will be directed to illegal criminal foreigners who went to Chicago and Illinois because they knew governor Pritzker and their sanctuary policies would protect them and allow them Post in X.
The governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, speaks during a press conference, on September 2, 2025, in Chicago.
Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP through Getty Images
Trump, promoting the federal acquisition of his Washington administration, suggested on Monday in other US cities.
“We could do the same in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,” Trump said in his comments at the Bible Museum.
“We save Los Angeles, we save Los Angeles,” he said.
The Trump administration deployed thousands of national guard troops in Los Angeles in June, on the protests of Governor Gavin Newsom and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass. A federal judge recently ruled that the use of federal troops in the city of California was illegal.
The New York Police Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, said Monday for the presence of the National Guard in the streets of Big City.
“As New York of a lifetime, the idea of the militarization of our streets,” Tisch said during a breakfast in the Citizens Budget Commission. “I will be very clear with anyone, all of you, the attorney general, anyone who wants to talk to me about this that the New York Police, we have this. We do not need or want the help of the federal government here that way.”
The contribution of Aaron Katersky and Michelle Stoddat of ABC News to this report.
